Making Plat so you can tradeskill?

[Bonzz]

Tradeskilling is one of the enjoyments I get out of the game.

I also enjoy playing my Paladin.... FULL time.

As a Paladin -- I am very limited as to how much I can do -- and I accept that (no kiting, no snaring, no nukes, no pets, not DoT's, no foraging, etc.) -- so no flaming me on using alternate characters, please.

Yes -- I could make an alt and play it a lot -- but hey, that would really detract from the fun and challenge of mastering one caharcter as much as possible.

Therefore -- certain farming I can't do solo and if I can -- I can't do with any expediency (kill one, loot, med, heal, kill one... LOL) and there are certain items I simply can't obtainn on my own (re: foraged).

I cannot afford to 2-box.

I don't have 24/7 to play (job and RL interferes).

It was suggested to me that it was "not hard" to make a Million plat tradeskiling on one of my other posts.

I searched this site for ideas and -- well -- lets say the info that I was told was there is not. That, or it is buried amongst the many thousands of posts and the proper keywords may vary post by post.

I am all ready aware of some ways to make coin -- but with the increasing amount of tradeskillers and in-the-know players -- many of those methods are really becoming less and less of an option and less and less of a profit, because of the flooded market, competition and secret strategies no longer being so secret.


Anyway -- I can go on --

What this thread seeks to do is to seek ideas on making plat to support the habit. (Personally I have always believed that crafted items should sell back to a merchant for MORE than the combines items cost to start with, but...)

Lets make these ideas that ANY CHARACTER can pursue. Even those who can't solo yellows and reds.... or mass kill with AoE's, or Kite/DoT, or Forage.... and are at present time, essentially broke, can't 2-box and have no alts of use.

[Catarack]

Well to start you off - you would do well to search past threads and look closely at them. The easiest way any toon can make money with even the smallest amount of starter cash is buy low sell high

Go into the baz and research work out what standard prices are for things - look for people selling cheaply. Buy cheap sell more expensive.

The other no brainer available to you is vendor farming - takes very little pp and can return some supprising results. Stacks of threads about with examples

Other than that as a pally you should be able to camp at least some items you can solo if you would prefer to farm them.

Obtain items to sell and setup a baz merchant - I have done this for friends and cleared out their banks of useless gear someone found useful.

Farm drops from greens that tradeskillers need. OK so you might not like it but some tradeskillers DO have lots of pp and would rather not farm the pelts, silks, hides, etc etc. Go farm them there are tons of examples out there. I could list some but someone else may help you with that.

Once you have "seed money" you can start making things which you skill up from that people might be able to use. Gem studded chains for JC, Any Velious fur usually tributes for something, Sickles tribute also. Higher end people have been known to buy meldstones and resell the combine results (very pp intensive)

I am sure others have good ideas also

[Elyssanda]

you didn't say what level pally... but my DH plays a Pally (only) and he farms Acrylia caverns. (No dual comping) he started the hard way kill one med to full kill next. but now he's sufficient level that that no longer happens.. either way, he made PP. farming there results in, #1 acrylia... which gets sold in bazaar VERY quickly at 35pp per brick of any size (vendor the blocks for 103pp)
#2 acrylia etched runes... stackable, and sell to vendors for nice chunk of PP...
#3 filth covered weapons... vendor for approx 130pp
then if you are able to (or have a group with you) there are a few non-capitalized names in there who drop various items which can sell nicely in the bazaar.
______________
If you are lower level... Go kill shak drathas in the cave system of Shadeweavers thicket.. Mobs are low 30's and drop chunks of condensed shadows.. these sell anywhere from 35-50pp each, are stackable and used in fletching to 268
Also, the acrylia you (may have) farmed in AC is used for the arrow shafts for the same arrows, as well as smithing and tailoring.

[Maevenniia]

I think it was Kyroskrane who suggested in the other thread that it was "easy" to make a million pp in tradeskills...

Kyros, I luv ya hun, but you are a bit looney

"Easy" is a relative term. Sure, someone with tradeskills already >200 and the closer-to-300-the-better will be able to make things without too high a rate of failure, but if someone is trying to get plat in order to skill UP to that point, too many failures can eat up that plat, instead of making you more.


There are some obvious ways you can make plat, depending on your tolerance for tedious tasks and your server's economy...

make & sell certain consumables - volume is key, since profit per item will be small, but selling a LOT of them will add up:

- Misty Thicket Picnics, Kaladim Constitutionals, Grobb Liquidised Meat...
- CELESTIAL ESSENCES - used in just about everything

hunt green mobs for other consumables in high demand:

-spiderling silk (go see the Froggies in Rathe Mountains, their domesticated spiderlings are an excellent source of silks, plus you can get some coin for every 4 spiderling eyes you hand in to the Exterminator near the banker.)

-low, medium & high quality pelts (wolf, cat, bear, rockhopper)...sell raw materials or make leather padding & sell that instead

- try getting lucky in NK with Highland Lions for a HQ Lion skin, they sell for 2k-3k easily

hunt non-green mobs and hope to get lucky on high-end drops:

- do DoN creator missions and sell the crystals, plus hope you get lucky on a /random if Metallic Drake Scales or a Glossy Drake Hide drop.

etc

[KyrosKrane]

I'll freely cop to being loony. =) I'll also admit to being lucky.

Seriously, though, the reason I said it was possible is because I did it. It wasn't fast, and it wasn't trivial, but it did happen, and it wasn't all that hard. That's why I made the assertion and I stand by it.

I think it was Robert Heinlein who said that making money is easy; it just takes a focus and dedication to making money, to the exclusion of all else. Truer words ...

I started out in EQ just before PoP came out around October 2002. I had no clue what the game was about, and no friends to help me out or "twink" me. (I didn't even know what twinking was!) From the very earliest levels I was attracted to tradeskills; something about the ability to actually have a career making stuff rather than killing stuff seemed inherently elegant to me, in some crazy contrarian way.

I started out farming spiderling silks when I was all of level 3. There was a guy who would pass through East Commons regularly auctioning that he would buy spiderling silks for 1pp each. At that point, my entire net worth was maybe 4pp, including gear. This was a fortune for me. In the span of an hour or two farming spiderlings, I was able to quadruple my net worth and get enough cash for several upgrades -- a whopping 20p worth of gear! On a level 4-5-ish toon with no support! Wow!

By the time I was level 8-9, I had worked my tailoring up to about 60-ish and was making banded armor with smithing. I would auction to sell the armor as I exp'ed in the Commonlands for 1pp per AC, and I got a surprising number of orders, given that banded was pretty much obsolete even then. Still, banded armor funded my smithing up to the mid-high 100's and provided the seed money for several other tradeskills.

Around the time I hit level 12, I realized the value of vendor diving. I would mine stacks and stacks of pelts, silks, zombie skins, and so on, then hit the bazaar and vendor them. As my tailoring skill went up, I started working the pelts and silks into leather padding, which I was able to sell for 40-50pp a piece. Each night, I would go into trader mode before going to bed. By morning, I was guaranteed to sell out of padding. Over the course of a two or three months, I estimate I made 100K purely off of leather padding.

By now, I was in my mid-30's and I had a much firmer grasp of the EQ economy. I capitalized on recent changes that others may not have been aware of. I also kept constantly vendor diving. Each day, I would check every single vendor in PoK and usually Shadow Haven and the Bazaar. I remember once, just after Tae Ew Blood had been made usable in tradeskills (or maybe the name was changed to distinguish it from another item that wasn't usable in tradeskills, I forget), I found eleven blood vials on a vendor for 220pp each -- total cost of about 2500pp. Within ten minutes, I had contacted a person who I knew was buying them and sold them to him for 3K per vial -- or 33Kpp total. That was over 30K of pure profit.

Around this time, I decided that my bank was just too full of stuff I was trying to sell. I bought a new EQ account and set up a full time trader, Kyrostrader, which is still a fixture in the Veeshan/Luclin bazaar to this day.

As my bank account grew, I kept working my skills. I blasted my way through Fine Plate and various leather and silk armors, though Wu's armor slowed me down due to the need for silk. About this time, LoY and LDoN came out with new armors and recipes that bridged the gap in smithing and tailoring. Again, the vendor mining paid off -- I would stockpile stuff that I knew I could use later, and sell off the rest. I was never afraid of making an offer, either -- on Veeshan and now on Luclin, I became infamous for constantly auctioning to buy and sell in PoK and the bazaar. Don't get me wrong; I never spammed. But every few minutes as I was banking or tradeskilling, I'd hit my auction hotkey.

By this time, my skill was high enough for the big leagues, which at the time meant Heraldic armor. On our server, there was a bazaar vendor named Famelin who was famous for making Heraldic -- he had 2-3 vendors with a complete suit of every type of Heraldic armor for sale at any given time. I started competing with him on price, and by auctioning in PoK and other zones. I don't think I ever managed to outsell him, but I did sell enough to make my first million. This was about one year after I created my EQ account.

If I were to start in today's economy, I'd change very little in my strategy. Naturally, banded armor wouldn't really sell well today, certainly not for 1pp a piece, but I'd do the new DoN cultural armors. Leather padding still sells; and it's that much easier to farm these days. I'd also do lots of velium farming. With the new conversion options for weapons, you'll be able to get lots for sale; and there are more recipes than ever that require velium. And there are literally dozens of threads on how and where to vendor mine for best results. I still maintain that a toon starting at level 1 could reach 1 million pp in about a year if they set their mind to it.

[Zacatac]

I've also made well over a million PP on tradeskills, but I'm not about to use the word "easy" along with it.

Huge amounts of hours over the past 6 years were spent doing tradeskills. Even from the early days as a young mage, I was busy getting xp on spiders in EK so I could gather silk. I hunted the lions for pelts. I spent hours killing every bear I could find for HQ bear pelts to make the 10-slot backpacks and sold them for 100pp each. (100pp at level 20 is a lot of cash back then)

Over the years, I made all kinds of things. Of course, much of it wouldn't sell at all today

I made tons of the Fine Plate dyeable armors, spent hours and hours collecting the dye parts. Spent more hours gathering the leather padding parts. Took orders from all kinds of people who wanted specific sizes and colors of armor. I even made a bard to be my "showroom" character and wear the colored armor around.

Later, I made tons of the BD cultural. I was the only High Elf smith with enough skill on my server to make it (and the only one crazy enough to devote so much time to doing it). Even today I still keep a full set of Blessed Full Mithril and Full Mithril armors in the bazaar for sale.

Now I've been doing Master & Grandmaster level DoN items, as well as some Bazu & Magnetic armor from OoW. And with 200 in all skills, I can easily make the subcombines needed.

The Bard I mentioned earlier became a GM brewer, and now makes my Kaladim Constitutionals that I use as my primary drink, and he sells enough of them to break even on the costs.

[andyhre]

If you have a limited budget, I recommend you farm spiderling/shadeling silk and the appropriate Low Quality pelts to go with it. You can even alternate between setting yourself up as a buyer and buying the raw ingredients and as a seller and selling the finished goods (Leather Padding, aka LP), and thus you can "farm" while you work/sleep.

If you have around 80 skill in tailoring, the combines are trivial, but the time saving to a rich smith of buying 100 pre-made LPs is such that you can make a very good return on your investment. Doing this, you can easily make a small fortune, esp. if you don't ignite price wars but instead just play along with the established prices on your server.

Once you have a decent chunk of change, then simply playing buy low/sell high is more lucrative than any farming you can so. When Metallic Drake Scales were first out, I had a buyer and a seller up and was buying at half of what I was selling. Because of people's different valuation of time, I was able to play a wholesale/retail role and earn a decent living. This part of EQ has the advantage that you can focus on a few key items you want to trade in and you can spend a few minutes each evening learning the price swings and then make money while you work/sleep.

I've stopped really playing "bazaar" as I've gotten more into raiding and such, but for a big chunk of my first 18 months of EQ, people teased me that my mule was my true main, and that my main was just a leech.

[Flehmen]

If I were to start in today's economy, I'd change very little in my strategy. Naturally, banded armor wouldn't really sell well today, certainly not for 1pp a piece, but I'd do the new DoN cultural armors. Leather padding still sells; and it's that much easier to farm these days. I'd also do lots of velium farming. With the new conversion options for weapons, you'll be able to get lots for sale; and there are more recipes than ever that require velium. And there are literally dozens of threads on how and where to vendor mine for best results. I still maintain that a toon starting at level 1 could reach 1 million pp in about a year if they set their mind to it.

Well, getting a toon to 1million pp in a year is probably easy... if you actually work at it, 6 months would be a long time for ya. I'd agree with KK here that on his server there is an easy way to skill and make your millions.

However, it is server dependant on what you can do. How many other people are TSing on your server, and understand that vendor diving is very profitiable?

When you make DoN armour, can you sell it for your cost or is someone skilling up on it and happy to almost make their money back? Fer instance, I did manage to make a few plat on DON armour, once when it was first released, and again when they upgraded the stats. Never was I able to make much more than a few hundred plat a piece(and only then if I spent a great deal of time farming or vendor diving) and always someone was selling the same stuff at the bare minimum cost(of requred vendor purchased stuff) withing two days.

Persistance, bordom, repetativeness, 1000000s of clicks on your combine button are the easy way to make 1000000 pp if you only have one toon.

CEs certainly go well, and you can generally make 1pp per if your baz isn't overloaded and the upper TSers are feeling generous. So 1 million presses of the combine button will get you there "easily". More research will make it a little faster and more fun with potential vendor diving and making a few friends through auctions. Another tip.... get to know when spending money is the best way to make money. Often it is the easiest way to double your net worth.

Take care,
Ten.

[Woadan]

I haven't made a million but have likely earned and spent around 6-700k. I can't stress enough what folks have said about vendor diving...this has been my main source of income while I am building my tradeskills up sufficiently to make items that will sell for decent plat. The first time or two you run across a discordant scoriae (sp?) or something similar will make it worth your time!

Just another thing I didn't see mentioned. While I am vendor diving I have a separate window open for the auction channel. There are often sweet deals being advertised that I know I can make a decent profit from buying/reselling what others want to get rid of. For example, there is a tradeskiller on my server who occasionally sells multiple palladium rings (forgot the name, the ones that are +70hp and are great for twinks) he sells them for 100p each, and they fly off of my trader at 700p. A lot of folks just don't want to deal with having a trader and want to get rid of stuff quickly.

Keep an eye on what folks are buying in barter. Is there anything easily farmable that you can sell? A buddy of mine has made decent plat farming/selling flawless rockhopper hides to a buyer for 320p each.

Do your homework and see what's hot, what's new in the tradeskill arena. Right now from what I see and sell the new spell research components are selling briskly at great profits.

Hope this helps!

[Bumkus]

First of all. Easy? Who said making plat for tradeskills is easy? Nothing in this game is easy. You want easy? Find a game that allows cheat codes. (Well, tradeskills used to be easy, back when the velious armors took you to 300 in tailoring. /poke anyone whoever said newbies got it easy with new tradeskill interface. ) If anyone says it's easy, they are either minimizing their own efforts, or else are getting spoon fed by someone else.

I got into tradeskills, because I mostly solo and because it seemed a nice way to progress my character "off-line". I didn't really get into it sell high end combines, and I surely did not realize how much plat I would be throwing down the hole. I estimate it is costing me 7k per skillup at 261 tailoring. I don't know bout other people, but I can only solo about 1k every 2 hours from looting mobs. (Other people can probably do better, but those are the people that also say this game is easy. ) You can see that income versus outflow can quickly get out of wack with these numbers.

So bottom line for me is that I need periodic cash infusions. I've chosen not to eBay, so my infusion come from the bazaar. Personally, I don't see how it can be done without a trader, but maybe someone has other thoughts. Assuming you do have a trader and a computer that you can leave on 24/7.
1. Do not be afraid to sell your own gear. This works very well as you are upgrading equipment. I only speciallized in gear that I could use. That way if I screwed up and overpaid for something, I could still get some value out of the item. I wore a Darkened Visage which I probably bought and sold 6 times. Of course, some days this means you go out with an empty slot, but it really won't hurt you much. This works really well as you upgrade, until you find yourself totally equiped in no drop items, then you'll hve to find another way of getting your plat infusions.
2. Hunt in zones with rare drops off trash mobs. Natimbi drops +mana regen Talisman of the SpiritSeer and a +hp regen collar. These sell reasonalbly well (10K+) and you might get 1 or 2 every 10 hours or so. If you are higher level, then do Omens zones and pray for Slugworms to drop. If your getting xp anyway, then these drops are just a real nice bonus.
3. Farm tradeskill components to sell in the bazaar. You know what things sell for, so you know where to spend your time. I don't like this route, because it generally points me to zones where I don't get xp or faction, or whatever else I am needing at the moment. Still, not a bad option, if plat is the most immediate requirement.
4. And finally, yes, vendor diving is a common theme. Tradeskiller's greatest asset is that they know the real value of the broadest range of items. Who would know that slugworms fetch 30k? Crikes, they look like fishing grubs.

Oh yea, and dont forget about the most important thing.

5. When you do get that large cash infusion, don't go out and spend it on the first shiny bauble you can find. Budget yourself. There is nothing more depressing than being a broke tradeskiller.

[Qaladar Bragollach]

I've probably made a million pp in tradeskills over the years.

Unfortunately, I've sunk most of that right back into more tradeskills.

[Lnnolanwil]

plat

Lots of good points. I've pretty much done them all.

Making money early is hard, obviously ... making it at level 70 is easy and we sometimes forget how hard it was when we started out.

I just reminded myself by making a new toon on another server .. no friends or guild to help me. But I have all my knowledge ;-)

So, easy plat at low levels - swirling shadows in kitty noob zone Shar Vahl. Sells in bazaar for 50p+. Just getting 10 set up my new mage for all his spells and some nice armour upgrades too.

Rockhopper hides drop here too as do shadeling silks. Save some HQ hides to make into backpacks for yourself ...sell a few maybe. Use all other hides to make leather padding with the shadeling silks.

Easy ;-)

But by far - my biggest secret is having an always on connection - and i leave my toon in baz as a trader overnight and during the day when i am at work. That's the trick.

[Voltai Ausra]

Money's not a struggle

Making money is and will always be somewhat of a struggle for the serious tradeskiller. But if you know what you are doing you shouldn't have any problems. Your best friend in alot of cases are people dubbed "Power Skillers" That's tradeskillers who are willing to spend plat to skillup fast. That's been covered with the Leather Padding, CE and so forth. Also small velium pieces are an alright money maker if you are 40 or less. The conversion of weapons into pieces is fairly easy if minorly time consuming.

Something to think about is the mass production of things like Fishbone Darts, Runic War Javelins. They are long range throwing items that are exceptionally useful to pull classes. Monks & Rogues love them I've found. Another good seller is Elemental Bows. Fletching isn't that bad to skillup to 220ish. Then get the AAs and you'll do alright. Stonewood bows sell very well if only for their tribute value (46K) I've funded my entire tradeskill ventures from these three methods.

Oh hehe and the ability to charge for Master and Expert level combines now adays.

[Qaladar Bragollach]

I can barely make a profit on elemental bows personally what with bazaar prices for components (I'm not flagged) and a flooded market due to the current fletching skillup situation.

[Bonzz]

I appreciate you guys not flaming me and all the good posts and commentary.

No offense -- but I suspected that making a million plat was something akin to braggadocio (I spell the right?)

I am sure people have made huge amounts of coin off tradeskills -- but I am also sure they are long time Tradeskillers who ofen "got there first," so to speak. Thus, their singular experience is the exception, not the rule and I seriously doubt it could be duplicated because the game has evolved so much from when they accomplished it.

Of all the ideas posted I have tried many or most of them. Further -- many or most of them do work -- but not for great profits and not with any expediency.

In other words -- the profits normally translate to a very few plat per item.

I have had only as much as 120K at one time. I cannot attribute that to tradeskills or selling crafted items. I can only attribute that to grouping, lucky dice rolls and selling the rare, high demand item in the Bazaar.

I quickly spent the money on tradeskilling, LOL.

I manage to keep between 10K and 20K -- but that is hard to do and slow going. It means I farm for tradeskill items, as opposed to farming to sell them.

After all -- why farm to sell tradeskill stuff? Why spend all that time farming things to sell only to turn around and buy the stuff you need to tradeskill? LOL -- just farm the stuff you need to start with, eh?

Also -- with so many characters now at top levels, so many expansions with so many more desireable drops and quested items, so many more players with high tradeskill ability and so many of those items flooding the market -- making truly big coin in Bazaar is all most a thing of the past.

The truth is more like that you can make money in Bazaar off tradeskill-tagged items and crafted items -- but only in small amounts per item, really.


* The stuff that used to be high-price is no longer so uber and rarely sells -- especially at good prices.

* Tradeskill items don't sell for much anymore, as most folks would rather farm their own than buy them, peiple know where to farm them now, what they are used to make doesn't sell anymore and they are really only desired for the skill-up combines (no for profiting).

* Stuff that does sell and sells regular in Bazaar also has a lot of competition in selling it -- so it sells for very low prices and tiny profits (Misty's, Teas, etc.).

* Cornering the market is a very risky venture, as it requires you shell out a lot of cash to buy-out the competition, hope the items sell for your mark-up and you best keep the competition bought out (people that log in as a trader once you set up shop).

* Certain items are used a lot like Celestial Essence. But anyone can go to Abysamal Sea and make all they want, all day long. With a trivial of 15 -- why buy from other players? LOL

I am of the mind that the only sure way to make money in EQ -- with real and considerable profits -- are from lucky rolls and selling the rare item (or the rare items crafted from it).

Otherwise, figure out what sells very regular on your server -- and sell them for small profits to stay afloat.

It would be nice, however, to find that honey hole. I suspect the new one will be DoD Slot 12 Augs. However, they are pretty limited in demand (mostly cultural armor) and the market probably wont splurge for long before sales die out.